Episode 712: "Carnal Knowledge" (SPOILERS!)

Here are my reactions to Episode 712 of the OUTLANDER TV series, titled "Carnal Knowledge". This was a fantastic episode, one of the best they've done in a long time, and I really enjoyed it.

*** SPOILER WARNING!! ***

There are SPOILERS below! If you don't want to know yet, stop reading now.

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The episode opens with Jamie and Lord John making their way through the crowded streets of Philadelphia. Jamie is a wanted man, pursued by the Redcoats, and Lord John is posing as his prisoner. Jamie says he came to John's house to find Claire. John looks a little wary at that, but says nothing. They obtain a pair of horses and head for the woods outside Philadelphia. No longer pursued by British soldiers, they have a few moments to talk.

"I'm grateful for ye," Jamie says. This is straight from the book, but what we're missing is John's internal dialogue. He's all too aware that Jamie has no idea yet that he had sex with Claire, and he's understandably worried about what will happen when he finds out.

His heart was beating very erratically; perhaps it would conveniently stop. He waited for a moment to allow it to do this if it liked, but it went on cheerfully thumping away. No help, then. Jamie was still looking quizzically at him. Best to get it over quickly.

He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and commended his soul to God.

“I have had carnal knowledge of your wife,” he blurted.

He had expected to die more or less instantaneously upon this utterance, but everything continued just as usual. Birds continued chirping in the trees, and the rip and slobber of the horses champing grass was the only sound above that of the rushing water. He opened one eye to find Jamie Fraser standing there regarding him, head to one side.

“Oh?” said Jamie curiously. “Why?”

(From AN ECHO IN THE BONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 101, "Redivivus". Copyright © 2009 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

I love the way John squeezes his eyes shut while saying the words, as though he really did expect to die instantly. Jamie, on the other hand, seems oddly calm, almost indifferent, as though he's not really paying attention, and I didn't like that.

Those of us who read ECHO when it came out in 2009 had to wait 4 1/2 years to find out what happened next, but it was worth the wait! The rest of this scene comes straight from WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD, and I think they did a marvelous job with it, one of those scenes I refer to as "filming the book", because they used as much of the original dialogue as possible.

John tries to explain how distraught Claire was when she thought Jamie was dead (as we saw in last week's episode), but Jamie still doesn't believe that Claire would have had sex with him. John is gay, after all, and Jamie knows that quite well.

“Ye went to her because--from desire?” His voice rose, too. “And she let ye? I dinna believe it.”

The color was creeping up Fraser’s tanned neck, vivid as a climbing rose. Grey had seen that happen before and decided recklessly that the best--the only--defense was to lose his own temper first. It was a relief.

“We thought you were dead, you bloody arsehole!” he said, furious. “Both of us! Dead! And we--we--took too much to drink one night--very much too much ... We spoke of you ... and ... Damn you, neither one of us was making love to the other--we were both f*cking you!”

Fraser’s face went abruptly blank and his jaw dropped. Grey enjoyed one split second of satisfaction at the sight, before a massive fist came up hard beneath his ribs and he hurtled backward, staggered a few steps farther, and fell. He lay in the leaves, completely winded, mouth opening and closing like an automaton’s.

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 4, "Don't Ask Questions You Don't Want to Hear the Answers To". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

I liked the way Jamie's expression changes subtly as he listens to this. He's not sure what to think -- surely John can't be serious? Is this some sort of joke? And then it dawns on him that John really means it, and -- BAM!

The title card for this episode is an apple falling from a tree. Very appropriate, considering how much of this episode will focus on William.

In the next scene, we're back at Lord John's house. William comes to Claire to ask about the staggering revelation that Jamie Fraser, a groom at Helwater at the time of his birth, is his biological father. The dialogue here comes straight from the book. Claire is honest with him, answering his questions as best she can. Yes, Lord John knew all along. And Isobel, too.

Claire: "It's the truth."
William: "No, the truth is that everyone lied to me! My entire life is a lie!"

William is only twenty years old here, about the same age as Brianna was when she found out the truth of her own paternity. And the revelation is just as shattering for William as it was for her, particularly the realization that the truth had been kept from him all those years. Especially by Lord John, who's been his stepfather since he was six years old.

“You bloody bastard!” he said under his breath. “You knew, you knew all along!” That infuriated him almost more than the horrifying revelation of his own paternity. His stepfather, whom he’d loved, whom he’d trusted more than anyone on earth--Lord John bloody Grey--had lied to him his whole life!

Everyone had lied to him.

Everyone.

He felt suddenly as though he’d broken through a crust of frozen snow and plunged straight down into an unsuspected river beneath. Swept away into black breathlessness beneath the ice, helpless, voiceless, a feral chill clawing at his heart.

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 5, "The Passions of Young Men". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

I loved the way they depicted William's furious descent down the staircase, complete with the broken chandelier and bits of glass everywhere. Very much as I've always imagined from the book! I think Charles Vandevaart did a wonderful job portraying William's reactions, here and throughout the whole episode. I particularly liked the way he stopped at the foot of the stairs, staring at his reflection in the mirror. His whole identity, his sense of himself, has been blown to bits. Who is he now, the Ninth Earl of Ellesmere or the bastard son of a Scottish criminal? He can't deal with it either way, so he takes a swing at the mirror....

....and the scene shifts abruptly back to the woods, where Jamie has just punched Lord John again, hard enough to send him rolling down a hill. I liked the way they did that transition. Very effective! I've said for a long time that MOHB (Book 8) is a non-stop roller-coaster ride of a book, full of action and dramatic scenes no matter whose point of view we're seeing, and I'm glad we're starting to get a taste of that here.

This scene, again, comes straight from the book. Jamie seizes John and jerks him upright, and we can see John's left eye is injured. Jamie demands to know the details of what happened. John says, "No!" and Jamie pummels him again. Just when it begins to look as though Jamie might in fact kill him, the fight is interrupted by the arrival of a group of Continental soldiers, led by a Corporal Woodbine. The soldiers are suspicious of Lord John because he's not in uniform. Is he a British soldier, or maybe a spy?

"You got anything to say for yourself, Mister Grey?" asks one of the men.
"Lord John!" he replies, sounding very annoyed. He is the brother of a Duke, after all!

Woodbine and his men take charge of Lord John. I love the last exchange between John and Jamie, with the two of them glaring at each other.

Just under the trees, Fraser turned and gave Grey a flat, dark look.

“We are not finished, sir,” he said.

Grey pulled himself upright, disregarding both the pain in his liver and the tears leaking from his damaged eye.

“At your service, sir,” he snapped. Fraser glared at him and moved into the flickering green shadows, completely ignoring Woodbine and his men. [....] Just before Fraser’s tall silhouette vanished for good, he cupped his hands to his mouth.

“I’m not bloody sorry!” he bellowed.

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 4, "Don't Ask Questions You Don't Want to Hear the Answers To". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

By the time they make camp for the night, Lord John's condition has worsened considerably. He's clearly in a lot of pain from his injured eye. The soldiers search him and find the papers he put in his pocket (unread) moments before Jamie "returned from the dead". They also want to know if he's related to a General Charles Grey, a real historical figure who was responsible for a brutal attack on American troops in September 1777 that became known as the Paoli Massacre. (Fun fact: the real Major General Lord Charles Grey's son is the "Earl Grey" for whom the tea is named. <g>) Lord John tells them the other Grey is "a cousin of some sort."

I have to pause here and note that Paoli, Pennsylvania, is the home town of Carol and Tracey, who run the My OUTLANDER Purgatory fan site. (Check out their videos sometime. They are hilarious!) I've known them for a long time, so I asked about the pronunciation of "Paoli" on the show. It turns out that the people who live there pronounce it "Pay-oh-Lee", just as Davina Porter says it in the audiobook. "Pow-lee", as we heard in this episode, may be technically correct but it's not the way the locals say it. Regardless, the MOP ladies were delighted to hear their home town mentioned in this week's episode! I think Paoli Battlefield is about to get its share of the "OUTLANDER Effect"! <g>

Unfortunately for Lord John, the Continental soldiers holding him have just discovered the papers he was carrying, including a document notifying him that he has been recalled to active duty in the British army. Some of the men want to hang him right there as a spy, but Corporal Woodbine insists they must take him back to camp with them. "Colonel Smith will want to hang him in camp for all to see. Remember Paoli!" Uh-oh!

Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, a furious William is roaming the streets at night, muttering, "Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!" He can't get the word, or the thought, out of his head. His muttering attracts the attention of a young prostitute nearby.

“I’m partial to bastards myself,” she says, and invites him up to her room for a drink. William goes to the basin and ewer and proceeds to unbutton his trousers and wash himself. Why he would feel the need to do this is not explained in the show, but from the book, we know what he's thinking here:

Mechanically, he began to undress. He blinked stupidly at the basin but then recalled that, in the better sort of house, sometimes a man was required to wash his parts first. He’d encountered the custom once before, but on that occasion the whore had performed the ablution for him--plying the soap to such effect that the first encounter had ended right there in the washbasin.

The memory made the blood flame up in his face again, and he ripped at his flies, popping off a button. He was still throbbing all over, but the sensation was becoming more centralized.

His hands were unsteady, and he cursed under his breath, reminded by the broken skin on his knuckles of his unceremonious exit from his father’s--no, not his bloody father’s house. Lord John’s.

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 5, "The Passions of Young Men". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

The prostitute's amused reaction to this -- "I meant the water for your injured hand, not your c*ck!" -- makes William even more angry and embarrassed. Suddenly his Fraser temper goes off with a bang, and he throws something at her, knocking the decanter of wine from her hand. It shatters on the floor, and the prostitute starts yelling for Ned, the bodyguard, to throw him out. William lets go of her. Shaken, she orders him to get out.

In the next scene, Jamie arrives at the Continental Army headquarters, to see Colonel Daniel Morgan, whom we met in the first half of Season 7. He shows Morgan some letters from "our friends in France", presumably offering support to the American side in the war. Morgan takes Jamie to see General Washington.

Unfortunately, this encounter is rather anticlimactic, considering that in the show (unlike in the books) Jamie and Washington have already met. I strongly disliked Washington's appearance in Episode 408, "Wilmington", and I didn't like being reminded of it here. But that's a very small quibble in the middle of a terrific episode!

Washington offers Jamie command of a brigade of Continental soldiers, and gives him the rank of Brigadier General. Washington's words here come straight from the book:

“Though the Congress will have to approve your appointment,” Washington went on, frowning a little, “and there’s no guarantee as to what those contentious, shopkeeping sons of bitches will do.”

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 10, "The Descent of the Holy Ghost Upon a Reluctant Disciple". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

I love that line, and I was glad to see it included here. In case you're wondering: As a wealthy Virginia plantation owner, George Washington views merchants (aka shopkeepers) as lower-class, i.e. his social inferiors. So calling someone a "shopkeeping SOB" is an insult.

The promotion to Brigadier General is, of course, an offer Jamie can't refuse. Note that the Hardmans are nowhere to be found in this episode, so I guess their entire storyline has been omitted from the show, in the interest of condensing things. It's a shame, but with only four more episodes after this one to cover all of MOHB, I think it's understandable.

In the next scene, Ian and Rachel are heading back to Philadelphia when they encounter William on the road. He's happy to see Rachel, but visibly disappointed when she tells him that she is betrothed to Ian. You can almost see him thinking that this is yet another thing going wrong with his life, as if his current situation wasn't bad enough! Rachel and Ian take their leave of him politely, and then William suddenly hits Ian, apparently for no reason at all.

Rachel is outraged. William glares at Ian, having suddenly realized that Ian, too, knew the truth about his paternity all along and didn't tell him. The dialogue here is basically the same as the book, but then Rachel adds, "When I look closely, I can see a resemblance." Huh?? The problem is that TV William doesn't actually resemble TV Jamie physically. So Rachel is seeing something that isn't really there. Oh, well. It's a minor point, but I wish they had come up with a better way to explain how Rachel knows.

The rest of this scene is straight from the book. William and Ian begin fighting in earnest. Eventually it's broken up by some Redcoats, and William orders Ian arrested for assaulting an officer. Rachel is furious.

“If thee allows this to be done, William Ransom, I will--I will--”

William could feel the blood pool in his belly and thought he might faint, but not because of her threats.

“You’ll what?” he asked, half breathless. “You’re a Quaker. You don’t believe in violence. Ergo, you can’t--or at least won’t”--he corrected himself, seeing the dangerous look in her eye--“stab me. You probably won’t even strike me. So what did you have in mind?”

She did strike him. Her hand whipped out like a snake and slapped him across the face hard enough to make him stagger.

“So now thee has doomed thy kinsman, repudiated thy father, and caused me to betray my principles. What next?!”

“Oh, bloody hell,” he said, and grabbed her arms, pulled her roughly to him, and kissed her. He let go and stepped back quickly, leaving her bug-eyed and gasping.

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 21, "Bloody Men". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Rachel runs off to get help, leaving William looking stunned at what he's just done.

Meanwhile, back at Lord John's house, Claire and Mrs. Figg, the black housekeeper, are surveying the damage from William's dramatic exit.

"I never knew my sweet William had such a temper!" says Mrs. Figg.
"Well, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, it appears." (Hence the apple in the title card for this episode.)

A messenger arrives, looking for Lord John, whom no one has seen since he left with Jamie. The news is urgent: Lord John has been recalled to active duty.

In the next scene, Lord John arrives at the Continental Army camp and is brought to Colonel Watson Smith's tent. It turns out that Smith is an acquaintance of Grey's, a former British Army captain who has gone over to the American side. They have a cordial conversation (somewhat condensed from the book) during which Colonel Smith tells him the story of the Paoli Massacre. He accuses Grey of spying, and Grey calls the charge "ridiculous". Still, it's a very serious matter, and General Wayne could order him hanged.

Meanwhile, Jamie has returned to the vicinity of Philadelphia in time to see Ian being taken away as a prisoner of the British army. Their eyes meet briefly. Notice the look of incredulous shock on Ian's face. He thinks he's seen a ghost!

The scene between Jamie and William that follows is straight from the book, and I thought Sam did a great job with it.

“Listen to me, lad, because I’m telling ye what you’re going to do.”

“You’re not telling me anything,” William began furiously, and cocked a fist. Jamie grabbed him by the upper arm again, and this time dug his fingers hard into the spot Claire had shown him, on the underside of the bone. William let out a strangled “Agh!” and started to pant, his eyes bulging.

“You’re going to catch up the men ye sent Ian with and tell them to set him free,” Jamie said evenly. “If ye don’t, I go down under a flag of truce to the camp where they’re taking him, introduce myself, tell the commander who you are, and explain the reason for the fight. Ye’ll be right there beside me. Do I make myself clear?” he asked, increasing the pressure of his fingers.

“Yes!” The word came out in a hiss, and Jamie let go suddenly, folding his fingers into a fist to hide the fact that they were trembling and twitching from the effort.

“God damn you, sir,” William whispered, and his eyes were black with violence. “God damn you to hell.”

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 21, "Bloody Men". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

In the Continental Army camp, Denzell Hunter examines Lord John's eye, which is badly injured. ("Everything from my scalp to my chin hurts," John says.) The doctor's description of the medical situation comes straight from MOHB chapter 13, "Morning Air Awash With Angels".

Ian is released from the Redcoats' custody. Although Rachel is there to meet him, they don't kiss. Probably a good idea, as William is there watching. No point in rubbing it in!

In the next scene, William returns to the same brothel we saw earlier in this episode. This scene also comes directly from the book. A British officer named Harkness is loudly bragging about what he wants to do:

“Ever buggered a girl?” one of the dragoons was saying to his friend. [....] “What you want’s a girl that hates it.” The dragoon hadn’t moved his gaze from the women across the room. He raised his voice, just a little. “They clamp down, trying to get rid of you. But they can’t.”

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 18, "Nameless, Homeless, Destitute, and Very Drunk Indeed". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Harkness has his eye on the same girl William encountered last time. He goes on at some length, in a manner so offensive that William impulsively offers to pay for the girl, for the night, using his silver officer's gorget as payment. Harkness isn't pleased, but there is nothing he can do about it.

Safely upstairs in her room, the girl reveals that the madam calls her Arabella, but her real name is Jane. Again, this scene is taken almost verbatim from the book.

William assures Arabella-Jane that he doesn't intend to molest her. At first he doesn't even want to sleep in the same bed with her, until she insists. Eventually she simply straddles him without asking, and they have sex. Afterward, William is distressed, because he didn't mean to do that.

“The only honor I have left is my word. Have to keep it.” Then tears came suddenly to his eyes, with recollection of the moments just past. “Why did you make me break my word?”

She didn’t answer for a while, and he would have thought she’d fallen asleep, save for the hand that roved over his bare back, gentle as a whisper.

“Ever think that maybe a whore has a sense of honor, too?” she said at last.

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 18, "Nameless, Homeless, Destitute, and Very Drunk Indeed". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Back in the Continental Army camp, Denzell Hunter looks in on John, bringing him food, as well as a small knife. He tells John that General Wayne is on his way, that he means to hang Grey, and he must escape that night.

In Lord John's house in Philadelphia, Claire is surprised to see Jamie walk into her room without warning. She goes to him at once and hugs him, but he doesn't hug her back -- a sure sign that things aren't settled between them.

"You went to bed with John Grey, aye?" As usual, Jamie gets right to the point. But they've barely begun their conversation when Jamie walks abruptly out of the room. Claire follows him up to her bedroom. "Was it here?" he demands. I think that was a good idea, to tell the story right there, "in the room where it happened", so to speak.

“I told him to sit down and he did, and he poured out more brandy and we drank it, and I have not one single notion what we said, but we were talking about you. And then he stood up, and I stood up. And ... I couldn’t bear to be alone and I couldn’t bear for him to be alone and I more or less flung myself at him because I very much needed someone to touch me just then.”

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 24, "Welcome Coolness in the Heat, Comfort in the Midst of Woe". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

I love watching Cait through this whole sequence. Jamie is so calm, almost too calm (annoyingly so, at times!), but Claire seems to be barely holding herself together, just from the strain of reliving the events of that night, all those memories flooding back. There are far too many wonderful moments in this sequence to quote them all, but here is one of my favorites:

I’d been numb, and John had ripped off the dressing of denial, the wrappings of the small daily necessities that kept me upright and functioning; his physical presence had torn away the bandages of grief and showed what lay below: myself, bloody and unhealed.

I felt the air thick in my throat, damp and hot and itching on my skin. And finally I found the word.

“Triage,” I said abruptly. “Under the numbness, I was ... raw. Bloody. Skinned. You do triage, you ... stop the bleeding first. You stop it. You stop it, or the patient dies. He stopped it.”

He’d stopped it by slapping his own grief, his own fury, over the welling blood of mine. Two wounds, pressed together, blood still flowing freely--but no longer lost and draining, flowing instead into another body, and the other’s blood into mine, hot, searing, not welcome--but life.

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 24, "Welcome Coolness in the Heat, Comfort in the Midst of Woe". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

How do we know Jamie really does understand what she's trying to tell him? Not just intellectually, but emotionally, deep in his heart? We know because he's been through a similar experience himself, clawing his way back from the depths of despair, with John Grey's help. I love this quote and I'm so glad they included it here!

"When Geneva died and it was my fault, it was a knife in my heart--and then William ...” His mouth softened. “The bairn cut me wide open, Sassenach. He spilled my guts out into my hands.”

I put my hand on his, and he turned it, his fingers curling over mine.

“And that bloody English sodomite bandaged me,” he said, so low I could scarcely hear him above the sound of the river. “With his friendship.”

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 24, "Welcome Coolness in the Heat, Comfort in the Midst of Woe". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Finally, Jamie finds the words to come back to her.

“I don’t say that I dinna mind this, because I do. And I don’t say that I’ll no make a fuss about it later, because I likely will. But what I do say is that there is nothing in this world or the next that can take ye from me--or me from you.”

[....]

“Are ye my wife?”

“Of course I am,” I said, in utter astonishment. “How could I not be?”

His face changed then; he drew a huge breath and took me into his arms. I embraced him, hard, and together we let out a great sigh, settling with it, his head bending over mine, kissing my hair, my face turned into his shoulder, openmouthed at the neck of his open shirt, our knees slowly giving way in mutual relief, so that we knelt in the fresh-turned earth, clinging together, rooted like a tree, leaf-tossed and multi-limbed but sharing one single solid trunk.

(From WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART'S BLOOD by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 24, "Welcome Coolness in the Heat, Comfort in the Midst of Woe". Copyright © 2014 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

What a wonderful scene! Cait, especially, was amazing to watch through the whole thing.

The scene shifts briefly back to Lord John, sawing away at his fetters, but quickly returns to Jamie and Claire, in the formal dining room of Lord John's house. I was startled when I realized they were going to have sex on the dining table, of all places! But I quickly realized that Jamie wouldn't want to do it in the bed Claire had shared with Lord John. Still, it's an odd choice of location. Are there no other beds in that whole house? Really? Well, "any port in a storm", as my mother used to say.

If you listen carefully, you'll hear a bit of the Jamie and Claire musical theme at the very end of the sex scene, an indication that they've repaired their relationship, at least for now.

Finally, I thought it was a little strange to have the scenes of Lord John's escape interspersed with Jamie and Claire making love. But I'm glad John got away.
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I hope you enjoyed this recap. Look here for my recaps of all of the OUTLANDER episodes, and please come back next week for my recap of Episode 713.

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